Snake in the Grass
by myheartstillbleedsforyou
Summary: She's a dandy hand with a sword, competitive, eager to please, and her talents in physical strength make up for the fact that she has no control over the immense chakra at her disposal. Yet despite her more pleasing attributes, the residents of Konoha refuse to forgive and forget the transgressions which took place long ago in Hoshiko's childhood. Rock Lee x OC fanfic.


**Holy shit…**

 **It's been six years since I've actually tried to get into Naruto. I gave up on my old fanfictions because I was a young cringelord who only knew how to make Mary Sues or self inserts. Tbh I haven't really changed, but I hope that at least my writing makes up for it.**

 **I wanted to redo my old OC Arekkusu, but I decided to change her name to Hoshiko just because it sounds tons better than the former. I've also made many other changes to her character, but I hope you'll all stay tuned as I flesh her out in this fanfiction.**

 **Maybe one day I'll reinstate the youthful pile of mclove from days of yore, but for now, I thank you for beginning this journey with me. I hope you enjoy my return.**

 **Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto**

 **Hoshiko Kunishige © Myheartstillbleedsforyou/KoroMarimo**

…

Before I was even a dream, my father left the house and disappeared for half a year. During the first three weeks my mother disregarded his absence as something necessary for the mission, after all, jonin are often absent for weeks at a time. Besides, nothing could take out my father, a prestigious ninja of the Kunishige clan (who, although they were not the level of Hyuuga or Uchiha, still possessed some skill). During his absence my mother was called away on a mission of her own in the Hidden Sand. She returned at the end of the month, inquired as to whether she and my father had missed each other during her absence, and it was then the truth was realized. My father had not sent in a report, nor had he been seen entering the village.

Search teams were sent for him at the request of my mother who actually dug into her own finances to request a rescue mission. His trail was already cold by the second month, and when she received an official refund at the start of the third all hope was lost. She didn't attend the funeral. Instead she sank into a depression that transformed her into a ghoulish specter that wandered the apartment she had shared with the man she had loved for thirteen years. I had asked my caretaker once how she looked, because I wanted to know if maybe her monstrous visage had been passed down to me. I was reproached and beaten when I asked. My devil's gold eyes had been a product of something far more worse, and was not caused by the dark circles, hollow cheeks, and bloodshot sclera that she developed from days and weeks of crying out for a man that would never come home.

When he did return, for if he hadn't I wouldn't have come into existence, he was changed. My father seemed to have gone completely blind and dumb. His face including his eyes were heavily bandaged from numerous injuries, and he refused to speak to anyone of the ordeal. My mother was overjoyed. She didn't find it strange that he resisted all jutsu used on him, nor did she worry that once she became pregnant he wandered around the village aimlessly at night. A stranger in a distant land looking for something he could not form the words to name. My mother tried to excuse his eccentricities. Said it was the shock of the ordeal. She even gave up the title of ninja to take care of him, half crazy because of the absence and now even more so with possessive tendencies. There were rumors surrounding the two since the return. Something wasn't right. My father was an outgoing model of the community, not a shut in who wandered the streets at night. My mother was a pillar of strength among Konoha's elite ninja, not a caretaker who spouted nonsense and refused to let her husband out of the house.

When I was born, suspicions were aroused further and even the Hokage attended my mother's bedside to see if the rumors were true. Talk about the town asserted that the one who sired me was not the man my mother had married. The hair wasn't what worried everyone. Dark hair was a common, unthreatening color that couldn't pinpoint infidelity. Both of my parents had brown eyes and dark hair, victims of plebian genetics void of the sought after genetic mutations that created vivid cold colors. It wasn't my face or a telltale mar on my body, for I was just as shriveled and pink as any of the other babies born there in the village. What worried them was the window to my soul. My eyes were gold as ingots, dangerous and deceitful, a cat's slit eyes that expanded and contracted without help from the light or from the dark. They weren't stationary nor did they fixate on any one thing or person, but instead I was told my eyes constantly rolled in the sockets like a watchful sentinel. There was also the fact that I had not cried during my emergence into the world.

I have vague memories of my parents and of the past. Through third party assertions and insults I learned that my mother had kept me shut in her apartment with my father for an obscene amount of time. People said that she had refused to acknowledge the village leader or the acquaintances she had made in the shinobi community, and her explosive chakra abilities had been enough of a threat that other shinobi had been uneasy about luring my parents out of the home. Careful planning and consideration to my arrival had delayed any reconnaissance up until the third year of my life. I was told that during the actual raid I had lived in squalor in that home. Supposedly I was found crawling on the floor among vermin, while my mother and father were nowhere to be seen. I was filthy, covered in a rash that covered my face and arms, and I had been crying violently when taken out of the home.

Only few vague memories surface now and again of the time I spent with my parents, and I'm sorry to report that I remember my surroundings to have been very clean. I remember my mother's soothing voice whispering sweet nothings in my ear, and the violent screams directed at those who might have asked too many questions, denying accusations at every turn. I remember learning to crawl on my mother's lap, and eventually learning to toddle through the dark corridors.

There are no solid memories of my father, just vague flashes that often cross my mind whenever I wake from a nightmare. My father was an enigma. He never seemed to acknowledge me for I only ever remember the hunched contours of his back, messy hair sticking out from the bandages. He possibly looked at me once because I can remember running away and shrieking. I ran so fast and so clumsy that I smacked into one of the walls of the apartment. I didn't cry because of the pain. I cried because that meant both mother and father would come rushing to my aid and try to reassure me with kisses and caresses (by that time they had turned recluse, and refused to associate with the Konoha hospital after the staff had questioned my origins. I had never set foot in a hospital for an injury since then). I didn't want my father to come near me. His eyes had frightened me into hysterics not because they were foreign horrors that I didn't understand, but because they looked so much like mine.

On the day of my rescue I remembered my parents shouting, and then suddenly they were no longer there. My mother's absence didn't stir any emotion inside me. The last memory I have of that day was me sitting placidly on the tatami flooring of the apartment, picking fuzzy bits out of my clothes until the front door opened and a bright light engulfed me in its searing heat. It was there that my troubles began.


End file.
